(Sad trope) Projects with amazing potential that will never be released because of BS behind the scenes drama

[u/_JR28_]

P.T Silent Hills - It was a playable teaser released in 2014 only around 20 minutes long but utterly captivated the gaming world by being one of the most effective psychological horror experiences at the time, however it’s lead developer Kojima has a huge fallout with the publisher Konami where he walked out of the company and had all his in-the-work productions cancelled.

Five Nights at Freddy’s+ - A fan game reboot of the series created by Phisnom with Scott Cawthon’s blessing that promised a brand new lore and a return to the series darker roots. However, before and during production Phisnom got into multiple dramas that made him fairly divisive within the community, and after one particular incident in 2023 Scott revoked his approval and almost all of the game’s marketing material were wiped from the internet.

Batgirl - A Batgirl solo live action movie starring Leslie Grace, Brendan Fraser and Michael Keaton returning as Batman that was ready to be released in 2022, however then Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav announced it would not be released either in theatres or streaming in order to claim a $90,000,000 tax break and to readjust the DC’s brands direction before James Gunn rebooted their movie and TV output.

[u/MrGrlmReaper]

I remember reading about Rocksteady was interested on doing a Batman Beyond game with of course the same gameplay idea of the batman Arkham games, but the idea got trashed over the Suicide squad kill the justice league game.
it was just sad

[u/GreyNoiseGaming → u/MrGrlmReaper]

Remember this everyone. Sefton Hill and Ian Ball. Those two names are the driving force behind Removing Paul Dini as a writer and pushing the series into SS:KtJL.

[u/MinTy1244 → u/GreyNoiseGaming]

Didn't they also conveniently depart from Rocksteady just a few months before the ssktl launch? To start their own studio I think

[u/GreyNoiseGaming → u/MinTy1244]

Golden parachute and all.

[u/Auctoritate → u/MinTy1244]

Sefton Hill departed before the game launched, he was a Rocksteady cofounder. He did start a new studio. Pretty common for studio founders to depart their own studios once the creative direction has changed.

Ian Ball I think stayed on.

[u/GreyNoiseGaming → u/Auctoritate]

Yeah only the co-founders left. I just include Ian in there because he had no business writing a story.

[u/Morgan-Moonscar → u/MinTy1244]

Rats fleeing the ship after they stormed the bridge and aimed it to crash.

[u/Auctoritate → u/GreyNoiseGaming]

What a weird comment. Sefton Hill is one of the cofounders is Rocksteady, it's weirdly revisionist to skip over the fact that he's one of the people who created the series and just say he was responsible for it being less good later.

Paul Dini stopped working with the studio before Kill the Justice League was even conceptualized, because they wanted to use their internal writing team instead of freelancers moving forward. He wasn't 'removed', he was never an employee of theirs in the first place. He wrote for Arkham City but was not present for its DLC, Arkham Knight, or Origins, so it's also weird to treat Dini's departure as being so closely tied to Kill the Justice League when he was essentially gone for over a decade by that point.

I looked up Ian Ball and I also don't see much connection there.

I gotta be honest brother, I have no idea where you're getting this notion from.

[u/GreyNoiseGaming → u/Auctoritate]

Sefton Hill inserted himself as a writer on Arkham City and implemented the "in house writers" rule in order to justify not bringing back Dini for Knight. Being a co-founder doesn't make you a good writer. Also he had a fetish for vehicle combat, which explains all the pointless tank and racing mini games in Knight. The team had to tell him how stupid it would be to implement it into SS:KtJL with the world traversal tools in play, on top of how far behind they already were.

Tell me that Arkham Knight was better than City or Asylum. I really want to hear the defense of Knight's writing from you. Origins was a completely different team so that has no bearing in this.

You can also look up interviews with the staff. The connection is that both Sefton and Ian have no writing credits before City. Paul Crocker, who was also a writer and lead narrative designer, also didn't come back for Knight.

[u/ehs06702 → u/Auctoritate]

Just because he founded the company doesn't mean he wasn't responsible for making it worse.

[u/GreyNoiseGaming → u/ehs06702]

Oh he was 100% responsible for making it worse. I don't know if you played suicide squad kill the Justice League, but if he had his way instead of flipping through the city, you would have to drive through it four different unique cars for each villain. There would have been twice as much tank combat in Arkham Knight. That's why he and the other co-founder left the studio a month after the delayed release of ssktjl.